Take a few seconds right now to think how you can make, something as commonplace and established as a door knob, interesting…

… go on, take a couple more seconds…

… done? 

Here’s Hideyuki Nakayama’s answer — a door knob that lets you see outside the door. Yep, the entire scene outside gets refracted inside the door knob so looking at the door knob can tell you what’s going on outside.

More importantly, this shows how you can run out of ideas only to find someone else add a fresh new batch of interesting ones.

Innovation never dies, even in something as established a concept as a door knob.